Named for the coffee-shop discussions I enjoyed during my undergraduate and grad school days, this is an opinion-piece blog centered on my interests -- history and historiography, the classics, literature, comic books, Japanese language and popular culture, video/computer games, role-playing games, the pulps, television and film, and science-fiction/fantasy.

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Saturday, October 13, 2012

In my Learning and Cognition course, I've been assigned to read Engaging Schools by the Committee on Increasing High School Students' Engagement and Motivation to Learn and the National Research Council.

The following consists of my preliminary reaction to the first two or three chapters and executive summary of the book.

As I've been going through the readings, I'm struck by a number of
social problems with the book that most people probably haven't
noticed. They have nothing to do with class or race. Instead, they
have to do with what we consider standards and how we define
achievement.

The fact is that there aren't enough jobs for the
number of people graduating college. Entire fields are overburdened
with hopefuls in the unemployment line, bearing their degrees that their
teachers promised would make them wealthy and give them a better life.
Indeed, I have to ask, is the implementation of these reforms contained
in Engaging Schools producing false hopes in students that academic achievement and college are tickets to a meaningful life?

Indeed,
it goes beyond standards and strikes to the core of why we teach. What
is our mission? To see the students succeed, one would assume,
especially while reading Engaging Schools. However, there is a
subtle subtext running throughout the book that seems to interpret
academic achievement as providing a way to be successful in life. The
constant need to motivate students is countered by the bevy of
assessments with which teachers inundate their students.

I'm reminded of Shamus Young's online "Autoblography" where he writes:

“Just make sure to do all the work, and you will pass my class.”

"My heart sinks. I hate when teachers say this. It means the bulk of our grade will come from doing things, not from knowing
things. It’s the first day of tenth grade, I’m sixteen years old, and
I’m hearing this a lot today. Some teachers even go so far as to grade
the notes we take in class. This is infuriating to me. In the past I
saw school as this perfectly arbitrary trial of mysterious activities.
Now I see it as a house of incompetents. Our goal is ostensibly to
learn things, but the system of rewards and incentives is often completely divorced from this idea, and sometimes even runs counter to it.

"If we think of grades as “pay”, then we aren’t being paid to learn.
We’re being paid to turn out volumes of worthless forgettable busy work."

Indeed,
I fear that the attempts to engage students actually fail because our
consistent reliance upon assessment and its equation to achievement and
success.

We've already set up a generation of people who have been
lied to by their teachers about good grades and success. The more I
speak with many of my fellow Gen X'ers in fields outside of academia,
the more I am inundated with statements like, "I didn't learn anything
in school," "School was worthless and a waste of time," "School was
bullshit," or "Yeah, I learned how to be a student, that's all." Those
who went to college felt as though that was the first time they were
able to actually learn something and the point was driven home by the
fact that during a single semester, they had two or three assessments
and nothing more. They either passed or failed. It was actually
liberating for some of them.

So what do we have? A book written
by a committee. The product of bureaucracy and reads as such. I have
little faith in it thus far--Marc Bloch was wrong when he said the
bureaucratic mind was the highest form of intelligence. This committee
begins its book with a report on findings and a list of
recommendations. To what end? What is achievement to produce? The
committee's language in the "Executive Summary" is vague and full of
Orwellian doublespeak.

In my interpretation, we are to compete
with the Asian schools that are producing competitive workers,
scientists, engineers, businesspeople. It is no secret that schools are
pushing math and science to the detriment of the humanities. History
and English teachers aren't nearly as sought-after as math or science
teachers. Meanwhile, we forget that those students are also taught to
read and write effectively in their schools. We are not.

And so
we pump out graduates who go to college as if it is the entire goal of
education. This is the teachers' greatest failure. Education is not,
never was, and should never be, simply a vehicle for success. The
fruits of our labor have resulted in apathy among those who know they
aren't college material and the unemployment line coupled with
staggering debt for those who are. Why should our students thank us?

A recent article in the Atlantic Monthly
describes how a single principal overhauled one of the worst schools
in Staten Island and made it a success story by teaching analytical
writing to students. Math and science scores improved substantially--a
rising tide floats all boats and our disinterest in the humanities have
led to student engagement and achievement at a low ebb.

The
ability to write effectively means these kids can think effectively.
Engagement in New Dorp High School increased because the students
realized that they were capable of achievement, comprehended material
better, and therefore had a greater stake in what they were learning.
It started to matter.

The ability to write effectively also means
that adults can think effectively. And this should be the goal of
education--a populace that is aware, knowledgeable, and able to think
analytically, critically, and creatively. Sadly, rubrics don't leave
room for kids who can think outside the box--rubrics are, themselves, a
box. Furthermore, the goal of education should not be to enrich
students' wallets but their lives. A student who gets straight Cs can
still grow up to be a happy, healthy, productive member of society be he
a manager at a store, a car mechanic, or owns his own plumbing
business. Somewhere along the line, we gave our kids this idea that
hard work and an honest living were inferior to a college degree and

I
don't want to engage my students because I think it will help them
score high on tests and get them into college. Indeed, I honestly
couldn't care less about any tests, assessments, or colleges. I care
that they learn because I believe what I have to teach them will enrich
their minds, help make them better decision-makers, informed voters, and
give them a stake in their society and community. I believe that a car
mechanic can be just as important a pillar of his community as a CEO.

About Me

An MA in history and Multicultural Education, with many and varied interests. I currently teach ancient Greek and Roman history, Western Civilization, and U.S. History to college students in exchange for peanuts.